Brush Impression, Heart Sutra is a monumental convergence of photography, calligraphy, and spiritual reflection. Comprising 288 unique gelatine silver prints, the work transforms the Heart Sutra’s 274 Chinese characters into an architectural and bodily encounter.

Embracing impermanence, Sugimoto intentionally employs expired photographic paper. In his darkroom, he undertakes a meditative ritual: with a brush dipped in fixer, he writes the sutra in the dark, guided only by rhythm and memory.

With a burst of light, the invisible script then becomes an image emerging through chemical revelation. This ceremonious process enacts and makes manifest the Sutra’s central insight, inviting viewers into a space where matter, time, and void coexist and dissolve.

Installation view of Hiroshi Sugimoto, Brush Impression, Heart Sutra (2023), 288 unique gelatine silver prints, 49.5 x 59.7 cm each, as part of ‘Hiroshi Sugimoto: Form Is Emptiness’. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

Spanning more than four decades, Sugimoto’s celebrated Theaters series features empty cinemas illuminated solely by their glowing screens. By keeping the shutter open for the full duration of a film—about two hours—he compresses hundreds of thousands of projected frames into a single luminous rectangle.

Early works were made at operating cinemas such as St. Mark’s Cinema in New York, USA. He later expanded his repertoire to include Abandoned Theaters and Opera Houses where he could choose the films that were being projected. Each photograph collapses a film’s “lifespan” into a single image, reflecting his recurring comparison between cinema and life—it begins, unfolds, and ends in disappearance.

Installation view of Hiroshi Sugimoto, Theaters (1976 – 2014), as part of ‘Hiroshi Sugimoto: Form Is Emptiness’. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

Rooted in the study of light, Opticks takes its name from Isaac Newton’s 1704 treatise, which demonstrated that all colours exist within white light, but are only perceivable when absorbed, reflected or transmitted by external objects. In this series, Sugimoto focuses on light itself, turning photography away from objects and toward the source of perception.

Revisiting Newton’s experiments, Sugimoto placed a prism in his studio and focused not on the familiar seven-colour spectrum but on the subtle “intracolours” within it. Using a mirror he designed, he further divided each band of colour into countless gradations. Originally photographed on Polaroid film, then digitised and enlarged, each photograph immerses us in fields of colour that seem to dissolve form, inviting us to encounter light itself.

Installation view of Hiroshi Sugimoto, Opticks (2018 – ongoing), as part of ‘Hiroshi Sugimoto: Form Is Emptiness’. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

Sea of Buddha captures the 1,001 gold-leaf statues of Guanyin, the Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion. The statues are enshrined at the Rengeō-in temple in Kyoto, rebuilt in the 13th century. They stand within the temple’s Kannondō hall—better known as Sanjūsangendō, the Hall of Thirty-Three Bays. After seven years of negotiation, Sugimoto was finally granted permission to photograph them. Working at dawn using only natural light and removing modern additions from the temple, he recreates a vision of how they might have looked when they were first installed 800 years ago.

Arranged in dense rows, the statues extend beyond the limits of the frame and appear to recede to infinity. Each photograph repeats frame by frame like prayer beads turning in a ceaseless loop, inviting sustained, meditative looking.

Installation view of Hiroshi Sugimoto, Sea of Buddha (1995), as part of ‘Hiroshi Sugimoto: Form Is Emptiness’. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

On view for the very first time, Spacescape takes the form of a folding screen and depicts Earth and the Moon at multiple points in orbit, seen from the omniscient vantage of outer space. The work emerged from a collaboration with Sony, the University of Tokyo, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), who together launched EYE—an ultra-compact satellite with a Sony camera—into orbit in 2023.

If Seascapes locates its horizon on Earth, Spacescape relocates it to the cosmos, extending Sugimoto’s inquiry into perception and scale. The work shifts the viewer from a terrestrial perspective to one shaped by satellite vision, prompting us to reconsider where and how human consciousness is situated. Through Spacescape, Sugimoto moves from observation towards speculation, expanding vision beyond sight alone.

Installation view of Hiroshi Sugimoto, Spacescape (2024), pigment print on washi paper, mounted to a folding screen, 180 x 872 cm fully extended, as part of ‘Hiroshi Sugimoto: Form Is Emptiness’. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

For more than four decades, Sugimoto has photographed his seminal Seascapes across over 250 locations worldwide. Each image follows the same compositional structure: sea and sky meet at a perfectly centred horizon line, with subtle variances in light, weather and atmosphere. By stripping away markers of place, Sugimoto reveals sea and sky as shared conditions across time and geography, revealing the fundamental unity of our planet—and, by extension, the shared history of humankind.

Sugimoto traces his lifelong interest in Seascapes to an early childhood memory of looking out at the ocean. For him, the sea is a reminder of the long span of human history, while the horizon—where water, air and light converge—holds the primordial beginnings of life.

Installation view of Hiroshi Sugimoto, Tyrrhenian Sea, Scilla (1993), gelatine silver print, 119.4 x 149.2 cm, as part of ‘Hiroshi Sugimoto: Form Is Emptiness’. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

Titled after Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s 1933 essay on the beauty of shadow and subdued lighting, In Praise of Shadows consists of long-exposure photographs of candles burning through the night. Some flames burnt out quickly; others lasted for hours. Each photograph records the full life of a candle, charting time through the slow accumulation of light.

Like Tanizaki, who valued shadow over the harsh glare of modern lighting, Sugimoto turns to the soft glow of candlelight. The flickering flame recalls one of humanity’s earliest tools—fire—while quietly marking the passage of time and the perpetual cycle of life and death.

Installation view of Hiroshi Sugimoto, In Praise of Shadows 980806 (1998), gelatine silver print, 149.2 x 119.4 cm, as part of ‘Hiroshi Sugimoto: Form Is Emptiness’. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

In Dioramas, what at first seem like spectacular wildlife photographs are, in fact, images of natural history displays. When Sugimoto encountered these dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, he noticed that closing one eye caused perspective to collapse. What had seemed artificial suddenly became uncannily lifelike.

This revelation became the conceptual foundation of the Dioramas series. Through careful framing and controlled lighting, Sugimoto transformed stuffed animals and painted backdrops—imitations of life—into images that feel alive. The works reveal the fragile boundary between appearance and reality, and the camera’s power not only to still life but to instill it.

Installation view of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Dioramas (1975 – 2025), as part of ‘Hiroshi Sugimoto: Form Is Emptiness’. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

Softcover, 168pp

Retail Price: S$60 (including GST)

ISBN: 978-981-94-5339-9

Conceived in relation to the exhibition Hiroshi Sugimoto: Form Is Emptiness at the Singapore Art Museum, this catalogue invites readers into the artist’s contemplative world. Through texts by the exhibition curators, Harvard scholar Dr Yukio Lippit, Mori Art Museum director Mami Kataoka and Sugimoto himself, a series of resonances within Sugimoto’s photographic practice unfolds, tracing its dialogue with Buddhist philosophy and cosmology; its intersections with scientific inquiry; its mediation of Sugimoto’s Japanese upbringing and aesthetic sensibilities and his formative years working in 1970s New York City; as well as its allusions to poetic and aesthetic traditions. Spanning more than five decades of work, this publication takes readers through Sugimoto’s enduring investigations into consciousness, time and perception. The texts extend his artistic inquiries, mapping the interplay between form and void, presence and (im)permanence.

Click to Purchase

Size A6 

A collectible set of six printed postcards featuring selected works by Hiroshi Sugimoto. Renowned for his meditative black-and-white images, Sugimoto invites viewers to contemplate time, memory and perception. Perfect as a gift or keepsake, this postcard set allows you to bring home a piece of the artist’s timeless vision.

100% organic cotton
Size; 70cm x 70cm

Crafted from 100% organic cotton and inspired by the Japanese art of furoshiki, this elegant fabric wrap transforms gifting into a thoughtful ritual. Featuring Brush Impression, part of a series of calligraphic works, it is as practical as it is beautiful. Beyond wrapping presents, it can be reused as a scarf, table accent, or keepsake cloth.

Capture the world with this limited-edition analogue camera, pre-loaded with 27 black-and-white exposures. Inspired by the artist’s meditative exploration of time, light and memory, each frame invites you to slow down and see with intention. A thoughtful keepsake from the exhibition, it offers a tactile and timeless way to create your own monochrome moments.

35 incense sticks

Crafted in collaboration with Atmosphere, this ambient incense evokes the contemplative stillness of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s practice. Warm sandalwood forms the foundation, layered with earthy notes of patchouli and vetiver to create a grounding, meditative scent. A refined keepsake that transforms any space into a moment of quiet reflection.